Steve Jobs has creative vision, but just as important is his editorial eye. He …

When Steven P. Jobs returned to Apple 1997, he returned to a slew of ill-conceived product lines. Some were excessive, and some were downright silly, but many were ultimately killed off for their poor alignment with consumer needs and wants. Still, even with Jobs’ discerning eye, he wasn’t immune to having to deal with a few bad product decisions. Here are four products Jobs rightfully discontinued, and one misstep of his own.

The Pippin

Image courtesy of Wired

Apple developed Pippin as a multimedia platform based on PowerPC Macs, running a pared-down version of the Mac OS. Though it looked like a gaming console, complete with boomerang-style controllers, the system was intended for more "general purpose" media use. Titles for the Pippin ran off of CD-ROMs, each of which included the operating system, since the Pippin platform had no onboard storage to speak of.

The only company that licensed the platform was Bandai in 1994, resulting in the Bandai Pippin @World player, available in white or black. But there was no room for a fourth console in a market dominated by the Nintendo 64, Sony Playstation, and Sega Saturn, systems that were both more powerful and already well integrated into the market. The only Pippin was discontinued in 1997, and fewer than 12,000 of the $599 systems were sold in the US between 1996 and 1998.

The Newton

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

The Newton predated Jobs’s return to Apple by some years, with the first MessagePad released in 1993. The PDA was developed under then-CEO John Sculley, who insisted in a keynote speech at the 1992 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that such devices would one day be commonplace.

The Newton platform was initially conceived as a range of tablets, including a 9” x 12” model priced at $5,000, but eventually leadership feared competition with Macs and launched only the smallest version, a 4.5” x 7” handheld model.

The first Message Pad was derided for its poor handwriting recognition and short AAA-fueled battery life, but the initial set of 5,000 units at MacWorld Boston in August 1993 sold out within hours at $800 apiece. The Newton was never exactly a failure, nor was it a runaway success over its five years on the market. When Jobs returned as CEO, he killed the Newton project rather than try to keep propping up a legacy that wasn't his own, planning to make a splash with his own line of mobile devices later on.

Twentieth Anniversary Mac

A favorite adjective of Apple critics is “overpriced,” one that Apple fully embraced with the release of a $9,995 desktop celebrating the company’s 20th anniversary in March 1997. From the limo delivery to the white-gloved home setup by a man in a tuxedo to the custom Bose sound system, the TAM was an exercise in excess. There was even a wrist rest on the keyboard, because carpal tunnel syndrome is for poor people.

But even with the wrist rest, there wasn’t enough excess to justify the price—the PowerMac 6500 introduced a month earlier had a nearly identical configuration for a fifth of the price. Around the same time Jobs ended the Newton program, he also ended the TAM’s run—the model was discontinued in March 1998, and the remaining computers were priced at $1,995 to get the stock moving.

Mac clones

Image courtesy of KP Surplus

In 1994, Apple decided the best way to expand its seven percent market share would be to start licensing its operating system to other manufacturers. Contracts were drawn up with licensing fees and royalties for each “clone” computer sold by OEMs such as DayStar, Motorola, Power Computing, and UMAX.

When the clones arrived on the market, Apple saw that the licensed OS wasn’t expanding the company's share at all—it was just eating into the company’s already modest hardware sales. The licensing agreements covered only Apple’s System 7, so when Jobs returned, he openly criticized the program and let the contracts expire, offering no new licenses for Mac OS 8.

Control of Macs returned to Apple, whose computer has since flourished thanks in part to the business' vertical integration. But the company had trouble stopping some manufacturers, such as Psystar, from making their own illicit Mac clones.

… And a Jobsian mistake: The Cube

The Power Mac G4 Cube, a computer suspended in a clear plastic box, was designed by Jonathan Ive and released in July 2000. The Cube sported a 450MHz G4 processor, 20GB hard drive, and 64MB of RAM for $1,799, but no PCI slots or conventional audio outputs or inputs, favoring instead a USB amplifier and a set of Harman Kardon speakers. The machine was known in certain circles as Jobs' baby.

While Apple hoped the computer would be a smash hit, few customers could see their way to buying the monitor-less Cube when the all-in-one iMac could be purchased for less, and a full-sized PowerMac G4 introduced a month later with the same specs could be had for $1,599. Apple attempted to re-price and re-spec the Cube in the following months, but Jobs ended up murdering one of his own darlings, suspending production of the model exactly one year after its release. While the Cube's design is still revered (it's part of the MoMA's collection), it proved consumers won't buy a product for its design alone.

It's interesting that as hobgoblin notes, many of these were just ahead of their time. The hardware of the time couldn't execute the vision. When the hardware got up to spec, these products were reborn.

"he killed the Newton project rather than try to keep propping up a legacy that wasn't his own"This is an unfair and off-base statement. It paints a picture of Jobs as a megalomaniac who could not stand to see somebody else's creation become important. It's stupid.

The reason Steve Jobs killed the Newton is because it was bleeding money, it was not profitable and had huge R&D costs at a moment in Apple's history where they had to focus focus focus on the main product line: Macintosh. He was ruthless but in hindsight it was the right thing to do.

Jobs must have seen enough value in Newton's IP to prevent selling it.

Yeah I liked PowerComputing. There was a model or two that had motherboard issues, but otherwise they were faster, and cheaper than Apples. Which really backfired on Apple, and is ultimately why Jobs killed them first thing when he came back.

You raise a very interesting point. "Old" Apple (and most of the industry) was all about the concept. The current Apple invests extreme care in the execution. Some may think they have less ideas (or are less innovative) than before but almost every of their ideas is a strike.

The clones were almost all based on the same motherboard though Power Computing was the only vendor to essentially improve the motherboards and make the clones faster than the same products Apple offered. Steve ended up killing the Umax clones last because apparently they were the only ones who were attempting to expand the Mac market in other countries, while the other Mac clone vendors cannibalized Apple's products.

Another project killed by Jobs before it could ever be released: Power Express. It was supposed to be a high end desktop and come in 4 various versions before it gone reshaped multiple times and turned into only two version, got a different CPU (Mach EV which was like the Pentium Pro with a backside cache) and instead got bumped into a G3 at some point and then axed before it was released. There were lots of units internally at Apple and when someone lost a lot of code that hadn't been backed up, Avi Tevanian sent out an email saying that anyone who was using those machines would be fired.

One more project killed, though I think it was for completely different reasons was to feature a CPU by a different company though the name escapes me. The CPU apparently ended up drawing lots of power, melting and didn't have better performance than the upcoming G3's and MachEV's (the MachEV's had amazing fpu performance and killed the G3 on rendering).

More projects killed by Jobs: DOS compatibility cards, Cyberdog, OpenDoc, AppleSoft, AppleWorks, Apple's printer line (and consequently the Monroe campus), Hypercard, Classic OS (and the group I believe was laid off). I was going to mention eWorld, but I think that was killed before Jobs returned. And you forgot to add XServe which was axed eventually and the Icon garden that used to be in front of the Apple Campus.

And then there was the rumored Tailgate project which was supposed to connect iMacs together via Firewire to a central server. That never made it out of the gate as far as I know.

When Jobs returned, he also killed sabbaticals and a fake email was promptly sent out by some clever bastard at Apple mocking him. Jobs wasn't amused. He also showed how to properly park in handicapped spots.

"While the Cube's design is still revered (it's part of the MoMA's collection), it proved consumers won't buy a product for its design alone."

Oh they do, all the time except when it's strikingly less-equipped than its own cheaper variant.

You managed to state your point and then prove it wrong in one sentence. People buy on value as you correctly but indirectly point out with the cheaper variant bit. The value proposition includes something other than design, hence people won't buy the "better" design because it costs too much more than the same spec-d but "lesser" design, hence the article is correct. Ultimately the value proposition is a culmination of many factors, design being one.

OTOH one could argue macs today sell on design alone since hardware is the same as PC, but that's discounting the value of OS X if one finds value in such things. Same goes for say iphone vs android vs the other poor bastards still trying to make smartphone OSes these days.

It's interesting that as hobgoblin notes, many of these were just ahead of their time. The hardware of the time couldn't execute the vision. When the hardware got up to spec, these products were reborn.

And the same seems to happen at Microsoft, now that Intel have lower TDP chips that may be better able to pull of the "umpc" that Gates pushed just before he stepped down as CEO at MS.

The Cube also had the unfixable without some major redesign issue where it would power itself off and on, and then the case cracking problems.

My understanding there is that the case itself could build up enough of a static charge that it would short the touch sensitive power button. Hell, i think there may have been at least one reported instance of a piece of paper being enough to trigger the switch.

Yeah I liked PowerComputing. There was a model or two that had motherboard issues, but otherwise they were faster, and cheaper than Apples. Which really backfired on Apple, and is ultimately why Jobs killed them first thing when he came back.

Another Power Computing Fanboi reporting in. I missed that machine. Jobs killing the clones decision also killed my motivation for owning a Mac.

To say that green-lighting the G4 Cube was a mistake is to misunderstand the Cube entirely. This was at a time when laptops were still far less capable machines (and more expensive) than all other desktops. The G4 was a pilot program to see how excited people would get about a tiny computer, in addition to a learning exercise in what could be accomplished with consolidation and miniaturization. As a product, it may have only lasted a year, but truly, do you think we would have seen either of the Mac mini form factors in this decade if Apple hadn't had the balls to give the Cube a chance? They learned an incredible mount of valuable information from the Cube, and to discount that simply because the product itself didn't have a long life is to misunderstand Apple on a pretty fundamental level.

I had a powercomputing clone too. They were great. They did cannibalize some of apples market I'm sure but they also made a lot of machine that Apple didn't have a direct competitor to then, or even now. They had a lot of mini-tower and desktop case macs that actually had some expansion slots and drive bays in them but weren't workstation class machine. Something still missing from apples lineup today.

I don't buy the Jobs cult inflating comment at the end of the blurb on the Newton, "...planning to make a splash with his own line of mobile devices later on." The reality is Jobs killed the Newton and took all the ideas and put them on the backburner until off-the-shelf mobile battery, display and CPU technology were at a point to sell iOS devices cheap and high margins.

Jobs' one accomplishment is teaching tech companies to sit on ideas until the hardware pricing comes to fruition for high margins. The iPod was invented in the early 80's but Apple didn't touch it until flash memory and 1.8" HDD density and pricing hit the mark where it would be marketable to a wide audiance.

Jobs had no original ideas there, he had the exact same ideas anyone who had watched Star Trek: The Next Generation had about mobile computing.